me
there are things
i should burn for
but i won't
there are things
i should burn
but i don't
burn for you
i still burn for you
when i drink i still drink
but only in fiction
i try my best
to avoid looking at
pianists guitarists and singers they don't upset me
but i guess their art is too honest
for who i am
as it should be
i will never
understood anything done
for me out of love
me i
shouldn't be alive
last november i kicked
my friend in the face while
he tried to save my life
i'd forgotten about it and so
when he visited me
in hospital the next day
i asked about the bruise
above his eye
he looked at me real
funny and told
me he ran into a tree

.and believe me, you will never get into the music of Bohren & der Club of Gore... if you weren't played a lot of classical music as a child, and having graduated from classical music, moved onto jazz music... you will simply not get this band, notably the bass fetish fest on the album Midnight Radio; how did i graduate from classical music to jazz? my GCSE English teacher, a Scot, a Mr. Bunce... THOMAS! he experimented with writing on the basis of our music, my writing partner were to explore whether "satanic" metal music induced violence... we were supposed to speak... but didn't really... first my writing partner's song choice was played, Raammstein's Rein Raus... then mine... Slayer's Spill the Blood... but then one day he brought in a jazz CD... Jazz on a Summer's Day (a compilation)... with the opening track being art barkley's moanin', sooner than later i was asking him to borrow that Ben Webster album, where you can listen to the best cover of the song: how deep is the ocean... and then came Miles Davis... i was probably the only 15 year old who listened to the message literally, and followed the advice the day after, having bought the album... he said... whoever doesn't own Miles Davis' kind of blue by the time they're 30, well... then there's something seriously wrong with them.

who would have thought...
that wes borland
could craft such atmospheric
instrumentals...
well...
     given how atmospheric
the song hold on
was on chocolate starfish
and the hotdog flavored water,
i'm not surprised...
and almost akin to
to tom verlaine's album
around...
you take one listen
to the song jubilee
from the album crystal machete...
whatever the hell he did
with big dumb face
with that death-metal growl...
i'm happy he finally found
his strength to compose
purely instrumental music...
obviously he's not a guitar
maverick,
   in terms of showing-off
like some Van Halen or
a joe satriani...
the whole point was to craft
something akin
to the comparison with
the album kenotic (2005)
by the band hammock...
yes, great... you can pick up
the frets,
the solo *******
into excess..
but like food...
   where the balance of flavors,
and texture are important...
texture translated from
a critique of food...
into music?
       atmosphere...
the haunting lingering on...
a simple nuance,
   matched to a perfected
repetition...
what texture is in food,
atmosphere is in music...
now... i figured...
   if john frusciante could
tap into a purely instrumental
album,
  and forgot about singing...
he'd probably come out
with a Grammy's worth of
an album...
             i mean... i like his music...
but if he continues to
preserve the multitask
endeavor of singing,
and playing guitar?
    he's not prince...
                 but if wes borland
can move away from
  that... ******* that was
big dumb face...
and make something akin to
crystal machete?
then john frusciante
can pull-off a tom verlaine...
or at least work with
something akin
to davy graham's
virtuosity on the track
blue raga,
from the album
              large as life and twice
as natural (1968).

I started playing guitar when I was 14.
I didn't take it very seriously until I was almost 17.
That's when I made time for at least an hour of guitar a day.
Now, six years later, I literally play about eight hours a day when I can.

My exposure to playing music before guitar was the Piano, but I rebelled when it became forced. That's just how I roll. I'm grateful for that musical icebreaker, though. I want to get back into playing keys. For now, I'm focusing on making the guitar into even more of a playground.

I use a 150-watt Ibanez Tone-Blaster head on a 4x12 cab. It's on the clean channel with the levels at 5 and the Overdrive on, with a gain of about 4. The hue is cranked, though. Gotta love that brightness.

I have a Boss ME-70 multi-effect pedal.
I must say, those types of things are great for sampling different sounds, or having watered-down versions of lots effects available at any time. But, if you find one tone you really like, you're best off buying or building the individual pedals to provide you with a higher quality version of your preferred tone.

Anyway, I have the hall reverb at about 5, and some 'classic' overdrive set to 5 for level, tone, and gain. That's all I need. I sparingly use light chorus or uni-v, or maybe a wah for certain parts. I believe simplicity is best in terms of effects.
Although, tasteful delay makes an alright solo into a ****-dampening solo.

I have many axes:
1 nylon 6-string
1 acoustic 6-string
2 Washburn electric-acoustics; a 6 string and a 12 string
2 B.C. Riches (Beast, Stealth)
an LTD KH-602 Superstrat
an Ibanez 'Artcore' series semi-hollow electric Jazz guitar
then, I also have a Roland Ax-Synth keytar.

In my opinion, guitars sound better tuned down.
So, naturally, I tried out drop-D, which was cool.
Then, I wanted all the strings to be lower, so I tried Eb-Standard.
I liked that. There was more body to the sound.

Of course, I tried playing in a drop-style tuning from there and discovered Drop-C#. This tuning stole my heart for a while. That is..
..until the voluptuous redhead D-Standard came along,
arms linked with her **** black-haired sister: Drop-C.

Tuned a step down, bends and vibrato are much more wild beasts.
However, this lower tension will trash your harmonics and stuff,
so I play 10-52 strings: 10, 13, 17, 30, 42, 52. Typically called 'LTHB,' or Light-Top Heavy-Bottom. This helps to keep the tension more similar to as if it were strung with normal strings in standard tuning. That translates into more overtones, which, in turn, means better tone.
More overtones means more pinch harmonics, too. Aww, yeah!

I need to get my hands on a decent electric baritone.
Maybe I'll just make one.

Oh, and another thing:
I just got some brass nuts. ;)

Let's take a look at the band
it's the ladies that  they're after
but I'll bet you didn't know
that guitarists finger faster.

Sure the singer's good with the tongue
and the drummer has rhythm mastered
the bass player always slaps the g string
but guitarists finger faster

My Girlfriend and I laid together
on her soft warm bed
little did we know what blazing passion
soon laid ahead

She said "Babe can you play me something? I had a very bad day
I kissed her cheek and with a voice so Meek I said lovingly "Okay".

I walked across the room
picked up my six string acoustic
I sat on the bed and played Stand By me, because I knew my girlfriend knew this.

She said "Babe, I wanna hear something exciting"
As I slowly came to a stop.
I picked it up again, and played one of my favorites, miserlou, by the king of surf rock.

As I played I looked at my lady
sitting across from me on the bed
she was grinning from ear to ear
and her thighs were sensually spread.

I laughed softly and stopped playing
and put my six string down
I got on top her warm body and said
looks like your my instrument now

I kissed her warm sweet lips
and looked into those come hither eyes
I slowly bit on her neck sliding
my hand between her thighs

I kissed her again, growling softly
As I ran my fingers between her hips
I slid my finger up and down
slowly upon her c/it

She said "Baby make me scream I want you to be my master
I kissed her once again and said
"Guitarists Finger faster"

With that etched onto her brain
I slid my fingers inside
slowly, but firmly I wanted her
to enjoy the ride

I started to let my hand pick up speed
Middle and ring don't fail me now
I blocked out all sound but I could tell
my hand should take a bow

I slid my fingers back outside
and put them to her lips
I licked them too and said
"Hmm your pxssy seems like a tasty dish"

On old mainstreet, sits an old café,
Where home-town-grown musicians play.
Sometimes they like to change its name,
But the clientele stay just the same.
When times are tough down in the town,
You know you can’t get the Black Dog down.

Rednecks and faux-necks and used-to-be-loggers,
Crafters and rafters, and activist bloggers,
And poets and hippies and mystics and fools,
And outcasts from the secondary schools,
And gypsies too: you’ll find them here,
Drowning in local, hand-crafted beer.

At night, locals sip organic tea,
And turn up the menagerie
Of lights and mics from another age,
Pieced together to make a stage.
And there, the guitarists waste their breath
Beating the Same. Four. Chords. To. Death.

There are some new lyrics, there and here,
But all of them memories of yester-year:
A year spent in the same **** space,
With others who’ve never left this place.
They sing of their dear loves and pasts,
And how much longer the wandering lasts.

And on they wail, and on they moan,
And twang the antique, rustic tone,
But their faces show they like it here,
This breaking haunt of yester-year,
And after the set, they carouse with cheer,
And smile contentedly to their beer.

On old mainstreet sits an old café,
Where home-town-grown musicians play.
Sometimes they like to change its name,
But the clientele stay just the same.
When times are tough down in the town,
You know you can’t get the Black Dog down.

Let me be frank.
For once this poem is not about you.
It's about me.  

I was born nine days late
& I've been trying to make up for lost time ever since.
But I've never felt the need to rush
anything
or anywhere—or anyone.
I went through more band-aids than Barbies growing up
& I used to love to climb trees—
until I fell out of one.
I've got about seventeen different favorite colors
including cerulean, yellow ochre, & ******’s green—
They all exist, I swear.
I used to stock oil paints in the college bookstore.
I think I told you that before, right?

Crap.
Me.
This poem is about me.

I knew I wanted to write every since my
stubby, five-year old fingers
punched the keys on my mom’s old college typewriter.
I would take naps beside it, listening to the hums & whirrs
of that beautiful blue machine.
I think I've been in a dreamy state of mind ever since.
I’m almost positive it's stunted my growth.
I've never been taller than 5’3”—
but I like that my feet never touch the floor
when we sit in restaurant booths.
& I like that my head falls on your heart
whenever I hug you.
I try so hard to hear your heart murmur—
though I can never seem to find it.

****.

Swedish Fish are my kryptonite,
& love sinking my teeth into fresh cantaloupe.
I enjoy slowly peeling the labels off of my beer bottles.
Some say that means I’m sexually frustrated.
I don’t really buy it.
I say I just like to constantly be doing something
with my little hands.
I’m happiest when I’m in the water & when I’m singing—
which makes my shower one of my favorite places
in the world.

I used to be a sucker for drummers,
before I was a sucker for guitarists.
Now I’m just a sucker for anything
with a sense of humor & good high five.
I’m good at picking out people’s quirks
& putting them into words.
I observe more than I speak—
& sometimes, I think that bothers you.
You know me— you can tell
that I’m not divulging the entirety of my thoughts.

**** it.

I have to see the ocean every year
& marvel its size—
if only to remind me how small my problems really are.
It's painstakingly obvious that I'm a Scorpio
& I don't necessarily think that's a good thing,
but I try to own it as best as I can.
I love the smell of extinguished candles, warm lighting,
& adding the “and many more” every time I sing “Happy Birthday.”

I like a lot of things.
I am a lot of things.
I can do a lot of things—
like sing all fifty states in alphabetical order,
make roses out of paper napkins,
& play “Oh Susanna” flawlessly on my harmonica.

But one thing I can't do lately—
one thing I have clearly failed to do on the whole
is write anything
without a piece of you in it.

Sooner or later,
they go down in flames.
Once apostles
on the edge,
crazy-fingers
annihilating
electric lines of faith,
and we,
in our self-induced
afflicted states,
listened to every line
of their angst,
sang along,
full of love,
clapped to their beat.

It was an atmosphere
It was an oxygen mixed with southern fog
Southpaw gloves tied in sailor knots
Waves of golden grains in ocean wind
The rolling hills behind property lines

It was the question you asked
not with words but in the way you breathed against the window glass
as I leaned against your Corolla
And we sang under the overpass

It was graffiti
It was graffiti
It was the cavernous concrete cats with purple hair and acid wash jean jackets
melting the light of their city's street lamps into the obsidian void of moistened pavement

It was the way the reverb spread the major seventh across the sky with burnt orange cascading into the violet of the minor ninth
which reminds me of crickets and summer nights (and violins and cellos and midwestern jazz bars)
and how bar chords are a guitarists way of flipping off a crowd-
surfing the web for an answer to why I'm still single-
handedly the handsomest man in my car currently.

It's the cloth in my empty passenger seat
soaking up the air of my A/C heat
and the scent of the soil spilt from the succulent I was given at a wedding last fall
and now I don't know if my trunk will ever smell clean at all

But I'll let this night be interstellar
I'll take a bath in the Big Dipper and write you a letter about Orion's Belt
or how I miss the stars sparkling in your eyes making contact with the E.T. in me.

Phone me home, darling.
I'm lost at sea.

-W.J. Thompson

I see timber, I see my Dad.*
The wrinkled grain grin
sits lost on his face,
he’s selling his timeless record collection:
the finest midlife crisis since records began.

Lined bits of paper with a pen and plan,
bass players and guitarists are all being sold,
including the front man,
microphone, monitor and stand.

Under the slim light, what’s
going to be sold is exposed
ready for a thorough cleaning
of the black gold moulds.

None of us are allowed near, we have been told,
this is a strict operation and it’s under control,
he starts spouting tiny liner note quotes
none of us understand, we need a translator- grab your coats.

We returned to a mess of a man:
he did not go through with his midlife crisis plan.
His extra 3000 children in their sleeves
can sleep safe tonight knowing that everything will be all right.

This one is for the old souls—
for the minds sustained on stories
and the lips that speak only
in combinations of words dusted
with jaw-tingling purpose.
For those who can find salvation
in a good bass line
and the disciples of that
aww sookie sookie now—
for the air guitarists
who will only ever make it big
going solo at a stoplight—
for the pairs of eyes
that can’t help but see things  
the way love is felt:
inexplicably with hungry fascination.
This one is for the old souls—
may the world always be
your zealous oyster,
producing enough pearls to fill
an Olympic-sized swimming pool,
and may you always be
brave enough to jump in
wearing only a smile.

We were never a fan of dialogues.

At the other end of the street I would watch her

Each Monday, carrying a new book every time.

I didn't like to read.

I preferred music, in my opinion
Was the equivalent of a book
Each telling a story.

The cup of coffee in my hand felt as warm as my heart
As I blew the hot liquid from the brim of the cup

And take a picture of her with the smoke that frames her body.

I wrote short poems of how captivating her beauty was
On the greasy table napkins provided for the coffee tables

Producing a different piece each time.

Her mouth would move as she read the words,
Mumbling lines of incoherent sentences I could not decipher.

At times I would see a smile break out on her face
And I would find myself consumed in slight envy.
Would she have smiled at the words I've written for her?

She was a song, I was a poem.

She was first written on smooth paper,
A thoughtless idea jotted in messy handwriting
Soon expanding into a verse and chorus
Written over and over again,
Revised by experts, reviewed until perfection,

Interpreted by bassists, guitarists, drummers, and vocalists
Appreciated repeatedly through the stereos of listeners
As they capture each beat and tempo.
She was flawless.

I was a poem.

I was rewritten in a single document copy
Renamed and revised
From the greasy fingers tapping away on keyboards
Typed and deleted,
Typed and deleted.

Frustrating the writer as they could never get an idea out of me
Leaving me in a file hidden in the folders of an old computer
Unfinished and waiting to be opened.

I was a mess in unorganized stanzas of ideas,

Lines which no one will have the audacity to read,

A waste of time,
Flawed.

She was the perfection in every imperfection
An artwork that you could only love through the eyes.
A piece which I
Wanted in my own.
I watched her again silently and wondered
Is it possible to love someone you've only admired from afar?

void careless
rock-star dreams
hopeless probation
fuzzy American ethics
loom secret command star
surrounded by angers
told i'm sick -- growth on track!
rising up to an unknown home
craves attention
can't sleep
need money, poor family
turning 23
need to become a rock-star
void careless

I remember summers ago with a boy, who wasn’t so sweet but could read aloud like a gypsy and read your hand lines like a priest. I’d kick off my shoes and we’d spread a huge blue sun-bleached towel on the sand and prop up a chair. The metal grew hot in the sun. I remember a cooler full of Coke cans and plastic cartons of strawberries; we lived off those for days at a time (along with the occasional Hot Pocket) because we were too lazy to bike out to town, and it was too hot to leave the wooden floorboards and ice towels of our house. The windows let in the evening lights from a few miles away and the distant sounds of Spanish street guitarists. Sometimes we clambered up on the roof to hear them better, and you memorized one of the songs they’d play every night, spinning out a rough version on your guitar. But you couldn’t pronounce the words as well.

When we went out on the beach, you hated the waves so you stayed high from shore while I waded out until the water reached my belly, feeling the coolness seep through my shirt and the sand riffle between my toes. I’d always wanted you to join me. I wish you didn’t hate the waves, but you did so I just stood there alone, taking in salt from the breeze and the laughter of two sisters dragging buckets of water they could barely carry from the ocean to their sand castle. Again and again they came and went so that they could fill up the moat, because you couldn't have invaders from the next kingdom over to be able to kidnap the princess so easily.

Another starlit Hemetucky night,
Finds me listening to one of my many,
Many Bonnie Raitt CDs.
Metaphorically speaking,
We must lick her ****.
Give her the recognition
She indubitably deserves.
10 GRAMMYs?
Listed as number 50 in
Rolling Stone Magazine's
100 Greatest Singers of All Time;
Number 89 on their list of the
100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time!
Lists? We humans love lists.
The HUAC loved lists also.
And while we’re on the subject of lists,
What list has your name been added to?
A statistical anomaly worthy of further
Investigation by our Big Brother in Bluff, UT,
Those guys tracking anyone goo-goo,
Googling my name, my poetry,
The poetry of Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto,
My UNpublished poetry, i.e.,
By definition, nothing in print,
Nothing between book covers,
Nothing you can get your hands on.
Merely cyber-effervescence,
An Off World ether,
An ether although vaporous,
A digital fingerprint, nonetheless:
Quickly identifiable,
Easily reducible,
An entirely redacted,
Boiled down, cooked down roux.
A roux you’ll rue? Perhaps.
Not to mention the kanga roo,
ROO as in secret, offshore
Kangaroo courtrooms.

So know, know you’re on a list.
One of numerous Watch Lists
Watched by the Watchers who
Watch people like us.
So, if you’re reading this online,
Don’t say I didn’t frickin warn you.

BONNIE RAITT:
Of particular interest is her brilliant cover of –
Her complete musical reupholstering of--
Del Shannon’s neonatal 60s-era classic:
“Runaway.”
That twang slide-bass intro.
That harmonica squeal hovering above;
Those long, pulsing instrumentals
Punctuating her grit.  Her heart.
Her dark & lonely childhood
That drew her to true roots music.
Like me, born in 1949--
Unlike me: in Burbank, California.
Daughter of Broadway Musical Star
John Raitt: a true Roadie,
If ever there was one
Bonnie sent to private Quaker schools,
Banished to pricey summer camps.
Routine experience for any child of
Successful entertainers on the road,
Again. (Sing it, Willie!)
Bonnie: denied nothing but
Parental time invested.
Consumed by a drive to
Get the man’s attention,
Daddy’s little girl,
Addicted to ******. Fade out:
“I wah-wah-wah-wah wonder.
If you will stay, my run, run, run
My little runaway,
Come back baby,
My runaway.”

(Theme, Variations, and Coda)

Theme – Andante sognante*  
I dreamed last night...
It was a dream
Like one I've had before
Variations on a theme
My colleagues standing at my door

Guitarists all, I bid them in
And soon it's time to play
My teacher first, each one in turn
They play the night away

Var. 1- Agitato
But as they play I look around
For my guitar is gone
I look and look but cannot find
Then comes my time...   “I can't go on!”

This is absurd.  How can I play?
(What?  Did I hide it by design?
Is this my “out” as light breaks day,
An ironclad alibi?)
“I can't perform, no, not today.
I'll have to play another time.”

Var. 2 – Appassionato
My time has come, and there I sit
With my guitar in hand
And wonder what the hell to play
My mind a porous shifting sand

Completely unprepared I sit
And pray for intervention
I make up some simplistic ****
And play it with “emotion”

Var. 3 – Allegro con brio e subito calamitoso
This time round, it's different
I really want to play.
I'm ready, I'm inspired!
I'll play till break of day

I'll show them what I'm made of
They'll marvel and they'll cry
But my guitar just falls apart
“What?  Why now?  Why? WHY?”

The neck breaks off, the body splits,
the strings are hanging limply
I'm foiled again, I cannot play
I'm ******* (to put it simply)

Coda - Andantino Contemplativo
What does it mean, this silly dream
This wild subconscious spectre?
What nourishment for soul to glean
From such netherworldly nectar?

Hmmm...

I think that I should spend more time
With hands on wood and string
To reconnect with touch and sound
To let my veiled heart sing

To feel, and set those feelings free
Catharsis, true release
My sheepish nature put to bed
My denigration now to cease

For I have something bold to say
Now my true voice is ready
I'll sing again through wood and string
Rich and full and steady

Alive with truths that transcend words
Ego now at bay
Connecting with the universe
It's time for me to play

*Fine

I have come to realize
on this very first of a stormy winter night,
shivering alone at my stacked desk,
that our relationship is a childish defense mechanism.

We fool around, curse each other out.
We share secrets like no two best friends ever do.
We sing our soulless hearts out to rock bands
with suicidal guitarists, comfortably evading our feelings.

"What a childish defense mechanism!" I hear myself say.
I never once wrote poetry for you
for fear it might elope into something out of control.
I was not ready for that. I am not still.
And I'm yet unsure I ever will be.

But ******, I just had to get it down on paper for once.
And I detest being stuck in this hazy, grayish aura
of it never being truly white, but not really black either.

And my thoughts are mimicking the weather tonight,
cloudy and thunderous, yet utterly breathtaking.
I think I might love you one day just as much as I love winter.

You're one to believe in god,
so tell me Grandfather;
You believe everything has a meaning
and war can be righteous
and war can be hell.
What does the rain mean?

It's not a metaphor for pushing life
into the festering corpse of a beat horse
in the late fall, early winter, is it?
Is it a drowning of that mistake?
A bed to sink your imperfections into?
What is this grey sky speaking to?

Was it WW2's tail gunners dead in the back
and pilots swarming like flies in vicious harmony?
bloodthirsty dogfights, and the folk guitarists
standing in awe,
jaws unhinged,
mouths open,
wondering,
"What the everloving **** just happened?"

You believe in God, so tell me;
They stuck your body in the dirt
over 2, or maybe it was 3 years ago.
You never told me anything about this.
You never told me anything
but empty threats.
God is a mass hysteria;
a mental disability,
a harmful fantasy.

But what does the rain mean?

oh god, what a deer of a girl, i walked into the antechamber of a supermarket, soaking wet from the rain, and she walks from the opposite direction, looking lost. i enter the supermarket proper, buy my **** (*** & ms. pepsi), and as i leave, she's stranded in the antechamber, secluded, standing in the corner, just by the doors... she came to a supermarket, but wasn't intending to buy something, anything... i don't know whether i'm over-stating a case of paranoia, or just plain suspicion, with regards to the event taking place... but **** me... better suspect some ulterior motive with regards to what just happened, than try to extend a terrorist attack narrative.

and the holy trinity of bass players in my generation's
            repertoire?
             **** going back to *john paul james,
        or paul mccartney, or roger waters...
           metallica gave us these three idol-worthy
bassists, after that accident that killed off their original
bassist, and they hushed the bass guitar,
           to the point that there were only two layers
of rhythm in, pretty much all of metallica's songs:
rhythm guitar & drums...
           i've lost respect for bands than don't allow
the subtle sound of bass guitar to be heard...
     it's a bit like abandoning the evolution from jazz...
in jazz... each instrument was allowed a solo,
to set apart the rhythm, and move toward each
of the instruments present a solo...
                 it's not exactly a philosophy of chaos...
    but at least jazz was fair...
                                            you could get to nibble
on each instrument in the band;
   and thank **** it wasn't supposed to be organised,
but could break away and compose it's own
"15 minutes" of fame;
   and i always respected bassists more than i'd ever
care to worship jimi hendrix or jimmy page...
  only three names stand out...
   michael peter balzary (red hot chili peppers),
                                         justin chancellor (tool),
and last, but not least
tim commerford (rage against the machine / audioslave);
can be ****** admiring those ***-licking
     solo-guitarists sometimes, esp. with these three guys;
i lost my respect for metallica...
           i can't hear the mediating layer of rhythm
   of a bass guitar, that could reconcile rhythm guitar
and drums... i have no respect for bands that do not
respect bass guitar; sure, it was a tragedy that the original
bassist died in sweden, but come on!
                   in the album st. anger... you disrespected
bass, that you made the drums... too crass!
if there's a psychology with regard to music?
   the bass guitar is the subconscious...
         the drums are consciousness,
    vita cor meum deus rhythmus - rhythm is the life
                               of my god's heart...
and rhythm / solo guitars? that's the unconscious...
      i know, "paradoxical" placing the drums
as the conscious element in musicology.

It was an atmosphere.
It was an atmosphere.
It was oxygen mixed with southern fog,
Southpaw gloves tied in sailor knots,
Waves of golden grains in ocean wind,
The rolling hills behind property lines.

It was the question you asked,
It was the question you asked,
Not with words but in the way you breathed against the window glass,
While I leaned against your Corolla,
And we sang under the overpass.

It was graffiti,
It was graffiti.
It was the cavernous concrete cats with purple
hair and acid wash jean jackets,
Melting the light of their city's street lamps into the obsidian void of moistened pavement.

It was the way the reverb spread the major 7th across the sky with burnt orange cascading into the violet of the minor 9th which reminds me of crickets and summer nights (and violins and cellos and midwestern jazz bars), and how bar chords are a guitarists way of flipping off a crowd,
Surfing the web for an answer to why I'm still single-
handedly the handsomest man in my car currently.

It's the cloth in my empty passenger seat,
soaking up the air of my A/C heat.
And the scent of the soil spilt from the succulent I was given at a wedding last fall,
And now I don't know if my trunk will ever smell clean at all.
It was how my energy dripped away into the floods of San Jose,
And how her eyes began to sink into her iPhone 7's screen.
It's in how I long for prolonged eye contact,
It's in how close the answer is but never slips,
I'm not interested in the electric work of fingertips,
I'm interested in connection.

A little girl, blond as can be,
Sits in her shed, staring mindlessly.
She thinks of an idea and tells her dad,
"My shed needs painting,
So it won't be so sad."
They worked on her shed, day and night,
Until her dad tucked her in bed,
Nice and tight.

The next day, the little girl sprang from her bed,
She ran to her yard, smiling at her shed.
The once old wooden shed,
Now had a lovely smile.
The little girl hugged it saying,
"Sorry it took a while."
From the early bird's chirp,
To the friendly owl's hoot,
The young girl played in her shed,
Like a chick in its coop.

One day the little girl began to cry,
For her elderly father was soon to die
The shed's smile soon started to fall.
The young girl it once knew,
Had gotten so tall.
It tried to hold up its rusty old boards,
Trying to cheer her up,
Like a guitarists with the perfect chords.

One day the young girl, now a woman,
Walked out to the shed, and gave it a hug,
Just like she always did.
She cried and talked to her shed,
Explaining that her father was dead.
Yet she thanked her father,
for building that shed.
It always cheered her up,
With its smile painted wide.
When she was happy, it stood up tall.
Yet when she was sad,
It leaned to one side.

One day she came home,
With a man by her side,
With her white dress flowing,
She happily cried.
The shed had only one problem
With this man by her side.
When th girl came visiting,
Her tears were already dried.

The years passed by,
As the couple had a child.
Though the shed grew tired,
The weeds grew wild.
With the years racing by, the shed fell down,
It's boards and bolts,
cast and scatteredalomg the ground.

The husband wanted those old bolts rid,
As he kicked the rusty boards,
They scattered and skid.
The girl looked at the rusty pieces of shed,
And smiled simply shaking her head.
Why get rid of such beautiful wood,
When we can make a baby bed?

The shed would've leaped out of the air,
Its joy and happiness,
Relieved by her care.
So the baby slept with its crib and mobile,
On the side of th crib, was the shed's big smile.

The mariachi band
Is playing dizzyingly
Next to our table
The guitarists
Hair wetly slicked
Back

"We live off of
Tips sir,
Anything
Will help.
Now, something
Romantic for
Your woman"

When they are
Finished their frantic
Strumming
I had him a
Folded 5

They dash off
To the next
Table

I slug a pounder
The beer inside is
Warm and the water
That runs through
The city is the
Same color as the
Water in Disney
World
Dyed that sickly
Turquoise grey

Tour boats cut
Small waves that
Lap the sidewalks
And the fat tourists
Feed tortilla chips to
Swarming clouds
Of small brown
Birds

Another warm
Swallow of beer
And the sunglasses
Perched in my
Greasy hair

Who needs a
******* job
Give me warm
Beer and sickly
Fake water and
A table with her

I’m drowning
It’s heavenly
See what happened is
A million faeries with golden wings
Carried us to the heights
Of the enchanted tree
Moonbeams melting our nervous hearts

See what happened is
Spanish guitarists
Serenaded us
The river whispering sweet nothings
As we floated
On clouds of pure wonder

See what happened is
The sky opened to show a rainbow grin
The heavens sang
Our eyes made silent confessions
And the universe,
Unable to take such intensity,
Exploded into violet flame

See what actually happened is
She touched my hand
And I melted.
And, later,
My heart flowed through my lips
To fly with stars and streetlights
“And I get the feeling you might maybe like me too”
And she smiled and said
“Yea, I do”

so she write this article, this amanda
foreman,
   a historian and with four girls
and one boy that's almost the fifth and
i'm wondering:
god, where has this headache come from
where is the man?
                life's too perfect to seem
to rhyme, or worth wasting your time
remembering some obscure Versailles verse
worth a shining ****'s worth of
a crown readied for a one-night stand...
**** me, a five+ female household,
i hope these muslim martyrs wishes what
they got themselves into...
   the true martyrs have three entry
points...
           mouth, vaginal, ****...
            if you can't spot the true martyrs
i'll tell you about asking the watermelon man,
or herbie hancocks, or in comparison
by ol' joe...
      treating his quasi-alzheimer stories
like your favourite jazz standards...
herr bitebonbon, dresden, auschwitz,
and some other memories:
  a drowning man will cling to a razor blade
to stay afloat, like any old man:
what bugs him now is not being sad,
but being foregetful...
he replays the rubric every day:
he says:
sure, i'm dead already:
but i want to remember myself dying!
   old people and their jazz standards of memory,
i am old, i feel old,
   oh ma'h feel'ah rob'eh m'on...
   patois or 'alf the pitied peshawar mamí son...
lumberjack my *** were 'ere bootleg
a stump of wood mamí sis...
  ya rite?
           *** we boss the 9,2,3,oh,5...
and call that a freq.,
  man that boy to a prrrrrristine:
shakin' m'ah timbers floating a-high...
man, sum tim' the talk ain't talk
it's called: scare-alley-cat-talk
feelin' a gush of **** talk-ji
  of an incubus toying with ya
little mums' crisp clear elijah of buttock
say in: **** as smooth as
a mouth slicking a rota of a hooplah...
talk cool: play the dumb infant...
next time you know:
   yo be talkin' to mama bear an
pleading for her Mississippi pancakes...
**** you not...
             she a one woman with
a five daughter brothel...
good lucky lucky luke if there's any
eager...
                last time i checked:
neither word, nor piano nor horn earned
****...
        just a nice ref. to: ooze...
  like washington's monologue in
fences didn't earned him oscar:
but a director's role none the less...
lady guesses to choose...
and her choice is always wrong
while her guess is always good...
          my, why a mighty site these days:
a man that stays at home becomes
a better cook than a woman,
who isn't all too eager to enter the outside world...
there's always the idea of a death by
a grizzly bear and i think of entering
a bear enclosure in the danzig zoo...
  and the little bear that ate my cardigan button...
and the bear mama...
      god, i love that memeory,
because it's so unreal that it's real because
it happened and my mind became
a ******* ******* trickster thinking
that my faculty of memory didn't dig
that far back...
         the child always remains with the man
that the child always was,
   but the child never became,
and the man who always imagined the child
becoming the man he is,
never said to the man un-becoming the child:
you were never this until "i" became you,
and "you" un-became me.
30+ hours wide awake and i'm still
trying to succumb to falling asleep
to fidgeting...
                        sure, nice trick, juggle three
oranges... then more into the iron league
of juggling three watermelons my
dear, common man.
         classical music acted upon the same
jerking off technique
     that excess rock did to solo guitarists...
chopin was a ****** on guitar...
he had no rhythm man...
            why do i know this?
the japanese, those wannabe white-ohs
pretend to be chopin...
they ******* ski-jump to boot!
                    chopin had no style because
he had no rhythm...
actually liszt ****** off the most,
smoked the most cigars and prematurely
******* with the most number of lovers...
    i really feel for that poet who cried himself
to sleep seeing him "perform"...
           you can solo the ******* want,
but the only rhythm on piano came with jazz...
i hate ******* for their lack of appreciation
of jazz... i hate to be a white guy telling them:
hey... jazz over class every day...
  you people, yes: YOU PEOPLE
ABANDONED JAZZ IN A MATTER OF
AN AMNESIAC TRYING TO REMEMBER
A DISTINGUISHING ASPECT BETWEEN
A T-REX AND MARC BOLAN!
how can you just give up rhythm piano,
the democratic soloing of each instrument
in a band in a matter of what,
20, 30, 40 years?
     LOSERS!
      rhapsody of the nincompoop...
hit the trends you ******, with your
nike airs and your shaaq attaq?
  canary in a colemine?
how 'bout a ****** smiling at me?
how about: pearly whites in a colemine?
talk kit-kat chunky pale white boy:
i start talking ivory...
                     hey: if the black guy ain't
the canvas of what i'm about to x-ray
i don't know why he shouldn't find his
root in the skin in the tongue in Swahili
so we can keep it neutral and not so,
******* lazy: english, keeping up with
post-colonialism Kardashians' shenanigans...
come on... they left sonny trashed nodding
at the piano: just one more note,
just one more note...
          boom... crescendo and the death's head
gravity pulled the gracious ***** down.
it's just a shame that they gave up
on jazz so quickly,
                   and turned to white *****
gloryhole ******* - which must imply:
Ethiopians in Japan...
              hey... you tell me:
last time i heard i heard the whale was
mammal, and that there was the Eskimo...
pop doesn't really bother me right now;
you left sonny clark nodding to his death
thinking he was falling asleep at the piano!
NOW... ******... BLEACH ME...
I ******* DARE YOU!
robert johnson didn't meet his fate
at the crossroads through a jealous middle
class white girl either...
given the times, being a white guy:
i guess that's also my fault...
oh look... there flies the cuckoo:
and here's the nest.

Prettiest lights and the
realest folks
all gather on the streets of
Times Square.
All that is expected is to enjoy the
signs,
the music playing,
stores and their windows with
dresses and mannequins,
and the lights flashing everywhere
creating the brightest
scene.
All that is expected is to
let yourself free.
Adapt to the lights that
flash
observe the signs of
artists on their way
put a penny in the guitarists
case
take in the audio of
real people
everywhere.
We would be lost in life
without the fitting in of
a little
shenanigans.
I just want
to be there
again.

I understand it wouldn't work.
And trying would make it bad.
A band can have two guitarists
but only one frontman, it's sad,

really, but I understand why.

Oh, friend of mine, carry me to
acceptance, when my feet hang,
dangle, when my legs lose angle,
push my body overseas, take me
to a place of peace, and island in
between, nothing to be seen, but
waves and clouds, colliding, turning
into one.

I'm not telling stories anymore,
what is wrong or what is different,
what is better, maybe left indifferent.
I told stories to fight the bore.

Unique, feeling, pursue that,
pursue it with passion as your
driver.
Wipe it off, use the doormat.

my constant corner
is at the back
on the elevated platform
next to the drums
where there is just enough room for
the drummer
and the bassist.
where there is just enough room for
the drummer
and me.

your normal nook
is at the front
of the regular stage
between the keys and electric
where there is plenty of space for
the vocalists and
the guitarists.
where there is plenty of space for
you.

it's as if we're separated
by a musical fence
we're never placed next to each other
because it just wouldn't make sense,
but i guess last wednesday
was the exception.

i arrived early and you were already there
you told me that we'd be next to each other, how rare!

we talked
we tuned
we plugged in
and very soon
we were playing music.

we ran through the set list
which consisted
of three songs,
we exchanged smiles
all the while
we kept the music going strong.

at one point
during the bridge
of song two,
you needed help with the chords
and it was really loud
so i leaned in close to you.

i yelled the note names
as my fiery fingers played through
the progression,
your eyes said it all
and deciding to fake it
was your confession.

later on-
i continued to help with chords
you kept me from being bored
you smiled at me
when we
returned to that bridge.

at the end-
to the stage our team returned
and that is when i learned
as the pastor closed in prayer
that maybe you do care...

looking at me
you held your arm out
wanting me to join you at your side.

and so i did.

.i never sought to see a vision of god, only his shadow, as i never seeked to hear his voice, but only the whisper, of his thought: and it thus expressed, morally convened: for i am by pentagram bound to say: it, all is, right before me - the world and all that deservers a master, and the one who is willing to reciprocate, whether doubt-ridden or doubtless, whether infuriated by prayer, or a militant denier.

better to exfoliate in one's vices,
than cherish one's virtues,
better to acknowledge one's ills
that champion one's graces -
to acknowledge one's burdens
is also to carry less gold
of the accomplished talents.

besides, i am thinking of the bigger picture,
am i part of something greater?
greater as in: the universal plan...
hell no!
               i'm part of a horde,
a horde that's been waiting for the next
tool album - 13 years and it's still
another 2 months till its release...
i'll make sure to buy it on vinyl,
         after all... all vinyl purchases
come with a code that lets you download
a digital copy...
            but i've been thristy for some
modern prog rock (metal, etc.) -
and it's not like i ever got into
muse - no twilight saga inspiration
to see here, sorry stephanie -
i just don't dig their ****,
   the screeching vocals...
     no, my uncle, a gen Xer,
and, as m.g.t.o.w. as you can be...
he once once said that simon gallup was
one of the best bass guitarists in music,
i'm not even going to mention
the red hot chilli man... pointless...
    but... for my generation,
the "dreaded millenials"... no other akin
to justin chancellor...
              bass is so important,
so so important: you need that space
in between the drums and the rhythm guitar...
******* solo all you want:
you don't have decent engineering
on the bass, so that it's prominent -
you have jackshit...

        on another point of interest...
i once heard a h'american voodoo satanist blah blah
treat the concept (not a theory) of solipsism
as a mental illness...
         well... tell that to a schizophrenic...
if the drugs don't work to hush out
the claustro-**** affair of not being
the only person (voice) inside his own head?
a bit... cluttered, wouldn't you say?
   but imagine, beside the drugs...
engaging a schizophrenic into meditating
solipsism...
           one tier above atheism from my
perspective, it's a binary schematic...

an atheist represents: 0,
  a schizophrenic represents: 1...
     why is that?
       the atheist is trying to plug a hole...
a schizophrenic is trying to salvage
his: self...
                 ideal representation...
i think: much more productive in ensuring
**** sticks together, finding your self (the reflective
form), to later express yourself (the reflexive
form) of it-self...
                 i always found atheism
to be so arrogant, boring,
     barely sniffing at the feet of a bow...
it almost makes me admire the way muslims
pray... i once cried at the beauty
of an adhan...
                  so... the right kind of islam is...
in a way: titillating me...

   ah... ****... it will never work...
          i like this quote:

some people live to eat,
     while others: eat, to live...
           i guess i'm of the latter persuasion...
a decent stew, nothing fancy,
even today i had the saliva for a parisian
pancake... so i made myself a parisian
pancake... with melted cheese and ham
and a tomato and chilli radish...

kiwi cider... i just love how some spirits
and the weaker stuff all have a story...
    **** me, they even enjoy dabbling
in phonetics (ohld-moot-sy-der) -
old mout (mawt) cider... get it right kiwis...
pineapple & **** rasberry...
   and it even has a name...
would you believe it?!
                         a trending topic...
nice... alongside when ms. amber jumps
into that ginger ale jacuzzi?
      a fine, fine evening is waiting for me
at the end of a day and into the night...

but, the kiwis did get one thing right...
unlike all the nanny propaganda
placed on most bottles in england...

    please drink responsibly
     2.0 units...
      but... there is no message from
the "chief": medical examiner...
   responsible adults should not exceed
a daily consumption of alcohol
  men 3 - 4 units daily
   women 2 -3 units daily...
          me? for the past few years?
roughly 40 units daily...
   but wow... look at all this poo'etry...
the kiwi cider company considers
only two acts as discrediting you from
drinking responsibly...
   there's a whittle picture of a pregnant
woman enclosed by red circle
    and a / in it... a big no no...
and?
              a whittle picture of a car:
    and as already stated...
       i get bothered when people ask:
how much? how much?
                      it's even my brain,
or my liver...
                 if i can get a decent amount
of sleep each and every night,
my liver can **** itself;
    there's nothing worse than bouts
of chronic insomnia that lead you toward
staying awake for nearly 48 hours
   and still unable to feel tired,
     that's when the hallucinations start
creeping in,
  but at least in a more stable environment...
more in vitro than in vivo...
   no safer environment to hallucinate when
sleeping: hence calling it dreaming...
  it's like these hallucination are like gut
bacteria of the brain...
         they need to express themselves
     to the brain after a certain threshold
of staying awake is breached...
                                            not fun...
p.s. **** rhyming poetry,
              sure, it's cute, it was great when
Dante did it... but i don't see all the great
masters from Ovid through to Hesiod and past
Horace doing it...
   cute poetry doesn't satisfy the thirst
for something, on the lines of: epic.

once upon a time, my english teacher (a pict), blamed english soap opera (namely eastenders), for his students treating books like bricks, or at least door stoppers.

yep, and the most entertaining drama
i've seen unfold, was between my
neighbour's dog, and my pavarotti's
worth of a cat: every time it rains
and his meowing, i'm an inch's worth
close to phoning *amnesty international
on grounds of: human abuse...
hate this ginger ****, this castrated frankenstein
monstrosity meowing all the time...
it almost feels like i guillotined his
******* + testicles off, even though
i'm the ******* of pedigree annoyance
tactics...
   but, really? it must be the jazz pedigree
in me, transitioning from classical music
that really, gets me,
i hate bands that disrespect bass guitarists...
i'm either sly, or pedantic, or simply
nerdy...
       i don't like bands that forget bass guitars,
i like to think of them as a buffer criterium
segregating rhythm guitar and the drums,
bass guitars allow a harmony,
listen to enough jazz, and you'll know -
i like, and i also don't like bands like
metallica... i must be deaf...
   i must have had a mumbai elephant stamp
on my trombone's worth of owing an ear,
but i can't hear drums...
        so i must be deaf...
   i know the bass is there,
but it's subtle... too subtle for my liking,
it might be a guilt-ridden thing,
having lost cliff burton...
    but i have to be a bit deaf guarding a reminder...
i have no respect for bands that
hide the bass, and bask in rhythm guitars
and drums...
              sorry, but bass guitar is a crucial
mediatory medium of what comes after:
either solo guitar or the already apparent
"stage fright" of vocal exfoliation...
and that's truly the case, the most "soap opera"
i've seen these days, was staged
by my ginger-ninja and my neighbour's *****...
when people become too docile to become
interesting or entertaining,
you revise yourself using animals
as a blank slate...
         and i must be deaf,
   i can't hear any bass guitar on the majority
of metallica's songs...
       devil's dance is besides the point,
being stated;
    just call me deaf and we'll be ripping
                   a dollar bill to the hush of: evens.

Now That We All Know What a Plinth Is…

What will we establish upon our bare, ruined plinths
Where late the stern-visaged generals stood? 1
Guitarists, perhaps, or free-verse poets
Or refugees from Harvard’s sophomore class

We could ***** erections to erections
As advertised on the family radio
With brazen legends reading “Hey-Hey! **-**”
Honoring the noble eloquence of our age

Or, with roses for remembrance, leave them bare
Amid shrill protestations of despair


1 Cf. Sonnet 73, Shakespeare

This house is a melody of illusion,
each world ends at the walls.
The windows are unnatural,
pigeons are blind to the glass.
Outside, they pull at the wires
like guitarists picking strings.
Into the electric nothing,
playing old songs again.
Break of living flickers,
the science of self prophecy.
When I meet myself in the mirror,
I do not see what you see,
the glass unfolds itself on me.

Sometimes love is sharing darkness;
azure, innocent eyes of night,
tender as waiting. Along
trails in city parks, identical
sparks of eternity. It is this,
the farce of identity, that weaves
a veil between you and me.

The unraveling of sophistry,
senseless, fractal, transactions
carved into the ice of time.

They bought up the bands first.
Every half-bit guitarist with some ripped
denim clothing jumped at the chance
to have more than bus fare to the next gig.

They bought up the bands and they
turned them into Spam.
Canned meat that is meant never to expire,
meant to be shipped to islands all over the world,
large and small.

Packaged, processed, made of who knows what.
It says what on the can, on the band, sure.
After all, who’s ever met a label that couldn’t be
doctored or fudged or a flat-out lie?

They bought up the music and the music flowed,
heavy with propaganda pollutants,
and we all changed our minds.

Our minds were worn as riverbeds are worn
as the music flowed through like a river flows through.
And the smokes we smoked were the smokes they smoked,
industry-purchased, paper-wrapped cancers.
And the shares went higher and the music played louder
and the bad that was turned worse
until everything turned from flowing to forcing
and the music was the ocean, large and terrible and murderous,
with things deeper and darker lurking beneath.

They bought up the bands and the music
and they wiggled their music-wedge into
the doorway of the tube, the telly, the tv, the idiot box.
After all, what’s so big a leap that the ocean of
the machine that is industry-music can’t manage?

They bought up the music, they converted us.
They bought up the television, they led us by the nose
like  ducklings, like lemmings.
They made us believe in art, believe in something
with lead-based paint covering the ***-metal caricature
of something that had been, long long ago,
but which never was, not truly.

Politics is pervasive, and politics pushes through.
The biggest stack pushes the players around,
makes the little guy fold even if he’s got a royal flush.
Because the biggest stack bought the half-bit guitarists
and the music and the television and all of us, bit by bit.

The biggest stacks have been buying us, every one.
And each of us has chosen sides, multiple sides,
because we don’t know what we’re fighting for,
but we know we’re fighting and we know we’re being bought.
It’s a difficult war we’re all fighting, alone and together.
A difficult series of seemingly pointless battles,
and we’re being bought and sold all the while.

But isn’t it nice to be wanted.

That's one hell of band
They've got up there
Give them one last hand
To show you care.

The musical talent ;
The genius on high
Is clear for all to hear
For those playing in the sky.

Music makers and performers
Guitarists and drummers
Singers and song writers,
Some maestros, others just strummers

The Heartbreaker joins then now
A list that expands every year.
Impossible to think of the choir
Formed above, and not shed a tear

yeah..so no one has a good word to say
or no-one has any word to say
well,the past over of today
come good when in our graves..

when madonna calls me one of
todays most talented poets
or paul mccartney says
one of the best guitarists..

i shall have to be kicking up
the daisy(s)
ah..poor me..
-to die is sometimes the only way..

Bus stops
Train stations
Awkward social gatherings
As cringy as family reunions you’re forced to go to
Except nobody has the embarrassing stories
That you hate to love to hear
Gas stations
That broken down 7-11 on the corner block
That has always been there
Where each stranger is as...strange as the next
The lunch line at school
Where you pass by those same old, soulful eyes
That have watched you since the first day of school
With the wild hair and stubby little fingers
That have watched a thousand broken promises pass by
Airports!
Airports where you are given the privilege to witness
The curious-as-can-be toddlers
With limitless imaginations
Not a care in the world, despite mom and dad always fighting
They don’t care
They’re still roaming around in their own universe
Running in circles with their arms spread out
No, sorry
With their wings extended out
So close to flying, just like the planes outside
They’re the same metal cages
Except nobody has told them that they’re not supposed to fly
Yet
In the passionate air guitarists
The professional lip syncers in the bathroom mirror reflection
And the truly skilled piano rockstars
That don’t quite exist yet

In the hopeless poet
Filling up pages
Like the ****** addict
Pushes in the needle
Both unaware of their coming demise
For just as there are those who overdose
The poet will eventually run out of ink
They will both search frantically before dropping to their knees
And the only thing left to clean up
Will be the diseased needles and ripped pages of scribbled nonsense
Sorry for the shoutout
In the teenage boy
Struggling to face his depression
Because he’s told to “be a man!”
In the teenage girl
Struggling to face her depression
Because she’s told “it’s all in your head, you’re overreacting”
In the teenage them/they/theirs
Struggling to face their depression
Because they know who they are
It’s the rest of the world that’s confused
So they’re not allowed to be themselves
Alice in Wonderland made more sense
All three are struggling to tame the uncontrollable thoughts
Criticized by the close minded Twitter posts and careless comments
All three are struggling to fight the daily battle
To ignore
To break through their ceilings
And finally have a chance at reaching through to the heavens
Desperate to escape this hell
Designed by those surrounding the warriors
Except they’ve just punched a whole through the roof of their coffin
And the small space is now filled to the brim with dirt
Suffocated
By the uncontrollable thoughts
Like Harvey on Huston
Except these three aren’t “Huston Strong”
They aren’t going to emerge from the dirt
Warriors once more
I’m sorry that I wasn’t there

In all those
Who get goosebumps when listening to a song
That they can feel is from another lifetime,
And who know that their adjective “weird”
Isn’t an insult
It’s a brand of respect,
Your see it
The Lost Ones
Each singing a soundtrack to their life
That they desperately wish they wrote
Yeah, you-----J.M.

i would have never guessed it that Flea would be a Sheffield United supporter, then again who would have thought that Ryan Reynolds would become the owner of Wrexham...

and sometimes: even if you're working an event
and not a spectator you're still like:
**** it, i need to get a t-shirt...

i can't remember the last time i owned something
that did have a tag: made in China...
i still have this shirt from Gap that reads
made in Ireland...
    now i own something that reads: made in Honduras...
the quality on this thing tells me...
if washed properly will last about 20+ years...

when was the last time i saw them?
did they just come out with By the Way?
2002...  so they must have played the London Docklands
Arena circa...
they were great then: but today they were
like the Beatles...
               Flea on par with John Frusciante...
you have to give it bass players that are on par
with guitarists if not somehow surpassing them...

back then at the Docklands... what was it?
12,500 seated and 15,000 in concert mode...
today? my guess is in the range of 70,000+
      they might be getting but that's when people
are at their best... esp. ageing rock stars...
               it's this last push at greatness...
                             i sure as **** wanted to hear
Dani California live...
                  and it wouldn't be me if i wasn't disappointed
at them not playing Warm Tape...

but other things happened...
                  i'm sometimes almost sure that my interactions
with spectators do not go unnoticed by other
spectators or the security team in general...
now... i'm used to hugs... having selfies taken...
but... i truly wasn't read for a guy to walk up
to make: steal my hand... kiss it... hug me and go
on his merry way...
    as if invited the Chillies to London...
oh sure sure... yeah... i organised this event...

but it's not that:
people have been really starved socially after the past
two years... it shows...
   i'm just wondering when all this luvvy-dubby
attitude of the public will return to the old complacent
drunk-rude attitude...
then the post-pandemic honeymoon period
will end... it's bound to happen at some point
with enough people having attended enough
public events like football matches and concerts...
when the security services will return to being
invisible traffic-cone jokes...
                   unless of course it's just me...
i don't see other stewards or security officers
get their hands kissed and get hugs and get asked
for selfies...

then again... i wonder if i've met someone who
read any of my ****** "poems"...
   i look at the viewing counts...
if i managed to pull over 15,000 examples from my
***.. split between several websites...
where on one just one has gained 48.1K traction...
and i add up some of the more popular ones...
i've reached viewership well over 100K...
so i'm thinking... maybe some of these people approach
me like they know me...
     or know of me...

am i being full of myself?
               i'm just not used to strangers kissing my hands...
or playing with my beard...
how much of this is post-pandemic socialisation-starvation
and how much of it inherently authentic
based on the ontology of individuals is:
perhaps... debatable...
nonetheless: Casanova could have boasted about
his adventures in and outside of the bedroom...
i'm hardly hurting anyone's ego by citing how...
how familiar people can become...
   even though they are strangers...
                        let's not get anyone's hopes up...
we're not talking the complications of friendships...
having drinks in a pub... talking about our highs
and lows... it's not about the shallowness of these
interactions... but the immediacy and the fleetingness
of them: the almost democratic nature of them...
"democratic": there's 8 billion examples of man /
woman on this earth... and London can hardly
compete with a small village, with the Archers'
claustrophobia (the Archers'?
   this radio soap-opera on BBC Radio 4...
               in my most low i used to tune in...
    i'm not old enough to tune into BBC Radio 4,
i don't think i'll ever be...
    i tried BBC Radio 3 for a while...
                   i still prefer being my own DJ) -

well... i tried listening to Anderson Paak coming in...
after seeing him live?
i don't think i'll be able to...
     you need to see him... he's a performer...
he's less a recording artist...
                  his recordings are stale compared to his
entertainment qualities...
    part James Brown part: obviously himself...

or anyone not liking what i write can just switch
to something from the poetryfoundation.org,
or the tabloid press...
                    even i think this is mediocre...
i'm less worried about but i was really worried
whether the train strikes would mean that
the transport-chain-lock would work in my favour...
whether i'd get the central line to Newbury Park
on time from Stratford...
whether i'd catch either the 296 or the 66 bus
to Romford and get one of the last three 103 buses
after 12:00am to Chase Cross...

but i just bought a t-shirt from a concert
and put it over my work clothes and walked with
the rest of the fans grinning-like an idiot:
i've been paid... and i saw a band i last saw
back in 2002... and i'm going to see them again tomorrow...

sure... who wouldn't want to be a mysterious
poet who dies at the age of 30
like Kathleen Tankersley Young from Lysol poisoning...
who wouldn't?! the public would archive
two poems by me and i'd be... immortalised...
Bukowski put a nail on the head when he said:
when you write into the thousands...
you realise... that you have written very little...

right now anything to push me sitting up until
2am and getting up at 9am...
drinking whiskey and soothing my legs
from standing up for... however many hours
i stood rooted...
     but i was smarter today...
        i decided to eat something on the shift...
i highly recommend the steak pasties at the London
Stadium... they're only £6 a pop and that's
not overpriced for a London venue...
i would never ingest that free-cheap-*****
sandwiches provided by companies...
mind you... i did manage to "steal" a free bottle
of Fanta from one of the kiosk managers...
          or if you're at Wembley... befriend a Bangladeshi
security guy... or a Somali...
not stereotyping... they can smooth-talk
any member of a kiosk to give you free food...
or rather... the people working in the food kiosks
are probably also Bangladeshi or Somali...
so...                  

          win win...

and of the people you work with... word quickly spreads...
i come in bruised from a bicycle accident...
obviously i had to tell people that "some ******" cut
me off... that's not true...
i was cycling drunk... the last time i ever did that...
i lost control when the road started becoming uneven:
***-hole this swerve that...
it was a spectacular accident of my own making...
i flipped forward across the handlebars...
even if i was wearing a cycling helmet: which i never
have and never will... a beautiful looking
imitation of a Francis Bacon painting...
but today: some guy approached me...
oh... looks like you're healing nicely...

         and i am... it felt so good listening Scar Tissue
live... i'm gently pinching the scab and eating it...
like a dog...
but i was having this conversation with Harini
and about her falling off her electric scooter...
how she would never get back on it...
and i told her: my bicycle was sort of my fault too...
but it's different with bicycles...
so i started telling her about those two glorious
summers when my grandfather was alive
and he'd take me to Pętkowice (Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship,
Ostrowiec County, Poland)
for horse riding...
            oh yeah... i'll never own a car...
i love buses, bicycles and horses too much...
i will never own a flashy car...
so i told her... this mare almost threw me off at
full gallop...
   see... it's different when you have a bicycle
accident and something rather different
when a horse throws you off...
bicycles are dead things... it's up to you to not
be drunk (idiot) and not spotting a ***-hole
early enough...
            but a horse is a living creature and has
its own rules, whims...

i think i'm rekindling sleeping genes in me...
i must have come from a lineage of horse-riders...
after the first lesson
having jumped me and this guy went into
the fields and the forest for a "stroll"...
my god... riding a horse at full gallop...
it's almost a bit like riding a bicycle down a hill...
no... it's not the same...
       sleeping genes of a Mongol? a ***?
                     Winged Hussars?!
who else where the great nations that heavily relied
on horses?!
    i just remember: put right heel pressure
on the horse's torso while pulling at the reins
of the left hand for it to turn left...
and if you want to move the horse to the right...
left heel digging into the torso
and right hand pulling at the reins...
and if you want to gallop?
    both feet dig heels into the torso
  and the reins are tightened...

                    and she looked at me like:
well... i wasn't expecting you to be a type that rode horses...
so much for rock stars... down on the ground
this is probably enough to impress...

i come home i find my maine **** readied for
a nap in my bed... wake up tomorrow...
root myself in... un-root myself...
drink some whiskey... have two days off...
wait for the boiler mechanic come Monday...
then head off to Wembley for the Ed Sheeran gig...
like any modern man i'm addicted
to the urban landscape...
although... i sometimes wish i could live
on the Shetlands... or the Faroe Isles...
be a lighthouse curator...

                               live in a cave: live in a cave:
breathe like a cave when a shout shouted
into it excavates an echo...
           i'm a terrible DJ... second night running
and it's still...
  
i can move mountains
i can work a miracle, work a miracle
ooh, oh, oh, (i'll) keep you like an oath
may nothing but death do us (a)part

she wants to dance like uma thurman...